Tag: postdigital

Guardians of Liberty: Part 5

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

5.

*Ahem*

“Never would’ve thought you had the balls to contact me again.” She said, rightfully.

He didn’t move. Her fingers thrust her switch-blade deeper into his side, blade still retracted.

“I swear to you, Martin, I’ll do it.” His steady silence conveyed his belief. The blade eased back, though by no means away. “Convince me not to.”

“Five confirmed hits. All corp-sec. I was one of the lucky ones. We’re off-grid. Wanted. Hidden. But they’re coming for all of us, Ket. You’ll be later. All of you.”

She sucked wounded air through her teeth; a sign of the last vestige of hatred for he and his eternal rightness escaping. Her grip remained firm. “Putting me under fire’s your response?”

“You’re smarter than this, Ket. Our past is behind us. Our future is dark. I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t need you. And I wouldn’t need you if this weren’t bigger than myself or us alone.”

Another hiss, albeit quieter. Her panthera purr in full-effect, “What makes me care, Nite!?”

Addressing his persona directly said was willing to deal. However quickly that could change was another matter.

“Ket, Corp-sec’s murdering hackers.”

“An33$a.”

“And Clockwork. Five hits. Two deaths. Three others that made it away, including me.”

She finally eased off. It was subtle, but the knife retracted. Noticing was as important as it was civil. Ket was the kind of woman who thrived off the smallest measures of affection. If ignored or shunned, things went haywire. It extended elsewhere to her personality, of course– and especially in his presence, was lethal if not given considerable attention.

He knew that now. He hadn’t before, but now he was older, wiser, considerably more flexible in mind if not body. That was fine, she was enough of the latter for both of them, even if he couldn’t enjoy it himself presently.

She knew he’d sensed the easing, and with it, sensed his attempts at maturity. Too many years and too many missed opportunities had passed for them to deny the spark’s existence. Besides, the spark was never the problem, the idiot trying to control the fire was.

“Turn around,” she said, easing to full height.

He found her presence more gracefully imposing than he remembered. She was Venus Di Milo; larger than life. Eternal. He knew it. She knew it. He was her love; she, his. Yet their time together had taught them that, then at least, they couldn’t stand being together.

All the same, he saw her again; the olive skin, muscled as some ancient warrior goddess. Like every other time, it was as if the first time. She threw herself at him, kissed him deep, hard, wet, sloppily. He submitted fully.

A moment later it was over and the world was rushing back.

As if nothing had ever happened, she retook her rigid grace and led him forward into shadows. She spoke like a General meeting a trusted informant, on-edge but openly-so; from the severity of circumstances surrounding their very meeting, if nothing else.

Ket was business-like. N1T3 allowed her to set the tone. To her credit, she spared him further groveling. “Everyone saw what happened last night. No-one’s surprised it happened. Just at how.”

She led the way between a pair of old buildings, weathered by time and soot-blackened from an eon of pollution. N1T3 suddenly understood how the original torries felt. If this what they pined for, they could keep it.

N1T3 knew where she was leading him, but refused to believe it until he arrived. He’d only just seen her again, after years, and it seemed nothing had changed.

Well, almost nothing.

She led and conversed with gestures completely unaltered despite the years. Two conversations still took place at once. The surface one, audible and obvious; the other in a subtext of shared memories and memetic resonance from shared, mental-wavelengths.

Ket was doing it on purpose of course, as much for his sake as hers. Looks and gestures were easier than unnecessary words. Losing that had been one of the realities of their relationship that made her detest him so. He doubted she felt any hint of intimacy now, regardless of the kiss. It was a simple effect of being glad he’d survived; more Human than personal.

She turned transactional, business-like despite the obvious intimacy belying their words. Ket was little if not a career-woman at heart, however it manifested. It was that world that raised and bred her, taught her how– if need be– to take it out.

She, like N1T3 was one of those stop-bits. The 1s ending binary-strings of 0s; referential identifiers– embodiments of society via their existence at particular points in space and time. In effect, they were two of the postdigital-world’s first fully-digital children, formed and perfected en-masse whilst in-transition between worlds– the pre and postdigital.

But like N1T3, Ket was more than just that. Everyone that knew her, knew it. She could do whatever she wanted in both worlds; the remnants of the old and the blossoming new one, that was knowingly building itself in her image.

She had connections, money, property. Wit and clout to keep and protect them, illicit or not. Was the prototype chosen for mass-production, knew it, and used it.

And everyone let her.

She led N1T3 inside a neglected building, through it to an apartment. Even then, part of him refused to believe reality. He ignored the disbelief, knowing it would transform eventually.

The place was considerably more rundown now, partially reclaimed by nature. Otherwise, it was empty and undamaged enough to have kept anyone from squatting. It might still be reclaimed by one determined enough, but no-one would be.

The place meant nothing to anyone. Even those that knew of it most intimately. For any, it was merely another reference point. A place of known-congregation, now abandoned but capable of purpose. Any purpose– and thirsting for one at that.

That was one of the things Corporate lifestyle never understood. Mostly, because it required feeling. Not necessarily intense feeling, but any feeling.

The place felt as a refuge or sanctuary might, via obscurity; through a want of steel and stone to sing so its inhabitants might breathe again beneath it. Those feelings were what gave credence to Japanese Shinto Kami, their sister belief-systems dictating spirits resided in all things.

In a way they were right, however unwittingly after thousands of years of proven science, via electron microscopes, advanced physics and metaphysics. What Shinto called soul and energy, scientists called matter and energy; the effects of super-strong bonds formed in infinite ways, and radiating properties like auras; hot and cold, powered or not, 0 or 1.

Ket led him into their old room, a padlock already removed from it. They’d taught each other a lot over the years. Nothing consciously of course, but over the same half-telepathic link that had kept her from killing him only moments ago.

She let him, shut the door behind them.

It was smaller than he remembered. What wasn’t these days? He figured it an effect of age. After you’d seen so much, a single room could never be so large again– save if containing a live nuke. Then again with Ket, there was no telling; it very-well might– especially given the rather large, tarp- covered pallet in the center of the otherwise-empty room.

He hesitated just inside. She pushed past, whipping the tarp off. There, in three tiers, were a series of Rations purchased in bulk.

“You knew?”

“I had them stashed years ago.”

He stepped forward to examine them, squinting at her, “For me?”

“Yes,” she replied curtly. Then, “No-one’s surprised. I know you too well. It was this, or you’d be dead. Either way, I’d move ’em.”

He eyed her, searching for anything beyond the business-like facade she’d put on, finding only it. She was on now, thus he needed to be. Otherwise, he might as well have ended with the blade. He produced a flash-key.

“I’m insulted,” she remarked.

“Not for this,” he corrected respectfully. “I need something else. Two things. Actually.”

She wiped off her smugness and pricked up her ears. He produced a list. “This. Quantity there.” “And something… defensive.”

She eyed him through a squint, “Dangerous.”

He said nothing. What could he say? He knew it was dangerous, but the whole world was dangerous. Especially now. And especially for him. Yet he’d take the risk over losing the chance. Way he saw it, he’d be murdered or die going out. The responsibility to his mission dictated he protect himself if necessary, though if only to an extent of attempting to protect it.

Ket caught the wave of his thoughts, his mind-frequency attuned to hers. She folded the page, took the flash-key. “Two days. Meet me here then.”

“If it takes less?” He asked, only internalizing the, “where will I find you?”

She eyed him levelly, a fairly-injured party still nursing its wound, however potentially forgiving. “I never left.” He winced. She expected as much. “Let me make one thing clear; I loved Martin Black. I do not love N1T3.”

Guardians of Liberty: Part 4

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

4.

Supply Lines

It was four hours before N1T3 returned to reality again.

Those four hours passed in the same, formulaic haze of micro-instants his escape had. Blocks of code meant chunks of time spent forming and refining structures, running simulations.If he didn’t, when the time came to put things into motion, the whole damned machine would freeze. It would smoke and grind its gears, disassembling through a cock-up cascade of unequaled proportions.

He’d written what was needed, prepped it to go on old SBCs he’d stashed for just such occasions. The systems themselves were small, cheap, could fit practically anywhere and ran on virtually no power. Alone, they weren’t much, but chained via wireless networks they could used for anything, if executed properly.

Cloud computing on a burgeoning scale few had yet to imagine, fewer still to recognize as already upon them.

Before N1T3 could turn anything into a permanent refuge– digital or otherwise, he had to secure himself supply lines, avenues of aid and support. First and most formidably crucial, was food. For the time being, he had running water and enough stashed filters otherwise to last a good while.

Cheese cloth and fish-filter charcoal could purify even the most questionable water. In the mean time, he’d begun filling old bottles and jugs collected from the environment. He’d plan further ahead later, covered now barring some unforeseeable incident.

Chiefly, getting food meant bulk-buying. Sending a massive load of ration-style nutritional meals somewhere unsuspecting was the only way. From there, N1T3 could stash it in chunks at a time– squirrel it away between safe-houses around the city, outer and inner.

It would require false IDs, creds, Darknet supplies no-longer available on the Darknet. Which meant finding them on the black market. Not a difficult task, but not exactly safe when hunted like a dog who’d just mauled a sniveling child.

N1T3 needed someone he could trust. Someone that worked markets like a pro, knew how and when to burn someone or not. At that, it needed to be someone self-aware. At least of the war that had begun. Burning N1T3 now wouldn’t make sense for anyone invested in that world. The digital realm was under siege, and those aware or concerned about it were honor-bound to aid one another.

Those not were far too dangerous.

N1T3 knew of only one person that could run markets like he needed, was invested, and still in the game. Unfortunately, he also knew that one person was just as likely to welcome him with a hand-shake as a dagger to the gut.

He dreaded the idea but saw no options; he was up a creek without a raft– paddles weren’t even ideas.

He hovered over his keyboard with unnatural hesitation. The Digital realm was his. No-one disagreed. Like other board-jocks, he was an avatar of something bigger, deeper; a networked intelligence operating as any logic entity would.

The R-L realm was entirely different.

The flesh-verse was no more or less genuine than the digital one, but you were more likely to survive encounters in one than the other. Especially if one of those encounters happened to be someone that had as much as sworn a blood oath to do you in as anyone could.

He sucked it up and hit “Enter.”

A half-hour later he was closing combo-locks along the main doors. More tricks he’d learned over the years; low-level social hacks. Good deterrents were never meant to be impassable, but rather so simple as to be deceptively manipulative. In effect, poorly securing certain places meant discouraging tampering via hacking passersby into believing nothing of import could be stored so insecurely.

Anyone determined enough would get in, regardless. Those doing so knowingly, most of all. Simple dual padlocks of average, nondescript nature were much more organic to an environment still pre-digital than touchscreens and glowing LEDs. Especially in an area already abandoned, they were simply more, forgotten refuse.

It was society-hacking through the medium of the mind, as coding through a keyboard.In the event anyone did find the place and was determined to get in, they’d find themselves unable to do much more than scrap gear, pilfer stored rations, or wait to be caught.

Aside from trash, N1T3’s safe-houses were empty. His clothing was disposable enough to be unworthy of mention.He had little else. In spite of that nothingness, N1T3 still had valuable bit-currency.

Like… a lot.

Way more than he could ever need, and spread through various unnamed accounts capable of being transferred into any currency necessary. He could buy and sell through anything through any anonymous contact. Even if he needed to build an ID profile first– nothing for a hacker.

That brought him back to task.

N1T3hustled along the alleys of an outer London ‘burb, nearly lost for where he was. The once-historic skyline was gone, now replaced by light-polluted skies and miles of drab concrete. Perma-overcast hinted smog-buried sunrays that never cut through the filth. What remained of once-prominent structures were unrecognizable, or altogether hidden.

London was what Ancient Egypt might’ve have been without their culture; average, boring, poorly infrastructured and superbly scrambling to compensate. Just like the rest of the world. Just as the Corporations wanted them; so they were spun, easier to manipulate.

N1T3 crossed a street, unconcerned with hiding. Gray haze hid him from distant observers. Besides, no-one was hunting him here. Not in the immediate sense. Corp-sec was still cooling its heels and no-one that might’ve seen him otherwise could’ve connected him with Martin Black. Not yet.

N1T3 hadn’t even awaited a reply. There was no point. The message was sent. Received too, he sensed. In a short while he’d either be making a play, or dead. Either was equally likely. Such uncertainties lent credence to theories of divinity, but fate was really always dead-even odds of alive or dead.

That was the universe’s way of maintaining balance between limitless reference points: Ultimately, everything always resolved back into a simple yes or no, on or off, 0 or 1. No matter how complex.

N1T3 emerged from the shadow of an old awning and leaned beside a battered wood-shack. The place had once been a public park before inflation took over and drove municipal governments into destitution. Nature had since taken it back. The park’s once-lush and primly groomed grounds were overgrown like a Congolese jungle. The former suburb and its centralized patch of neglect hell-bent on reclaiming what it called its own.

N1T3reached his destination, almost certain he was dreaming. He figured then he’d been killed, was living out his final moments bleeding out on a rooftop somewhere. Then, a smell hinted the air; earthen, fertile. It sliced through the smog like a Katana, utterly ignoring the wet-death clinging to the cool air, and cut straight through him.

He realized then why he’d loved her, would always love her. She didn’t need sight, or sound. The very air sang of her presence. She was, as she’d always been, a force. Wild. Untameable. Eternally unchained and radiant. Above all, unending. He loved her…

And she hated him.

Sometime after their first few months, things went south. Fast. Neither’d known why. N1T3, then Martin Black, had acted a fool in love unable to accept change. Like one too, his stupor damaged an otherwise delicate-yet-crucial piece of their relationship through simple jealousy.

Feelings aside, Martin’s own youthful foolishness exacerbated otherwise immature-but-harmless tendencies. He smothered her, in doing so, crushing a part of her reliant on extreme delicacy to function.

And continued making it worse by acting like an ass for far too long afterward.

It was over a decade ago now, but it remained Martin Black’s “Most Infamous Hour.” Mostly, as the result of a long, slow road getting there. Passion meant nothing if one side blundered into love through it. Then it became obsession. Passion was a force, like her. Love was a contract, a system. A cold world of yes and no. He was young and foolish, and in love worst of all.

Now, he was forced to go crawling back– at least, that’s what it might look like. If he weren’t careful. Ultimately, he’d do his best to control himself, but he could never make promises. It wouldn’t be wise or fair anyhow.

Yet she was on the air, already intoxicating him. He felt his muscles relax. All of his once-anxious energy gone. Those fears, the very ones that had torn them apart, so damaged their relationship, withered to agony and dust from their decade of separation.

But the sudden feeling in his back was her knife. Unopened. Vertical, spring-driven blade.If he didn’t answer sufficiently and sincerely, she’d kill him. He strained for a breath, but the slight twitch ready to launch itself into his kidney forced a pause.

She was giving him one last chance to think clearly. Now or never.

He took it, if only to show his complacency. Heat on the wind said she felt something too. Still.Hated it. Hated him for it. Like a cursed sculpture refusing to be finished. She’d tried to eradicate the feeling from her life. Tried with all of her might to erase him, couldn’t. She hated him– everything about him, too.

Most of all, she hated herself for loving him back.

Martin Black had wounded her so deeply no healing aura could repair it. Yet the heat, breath, and scent on the wind told him he could play it right if he tried. If he really cared to. He couldn’t be sure he wanted to. Not yet. Not really. There was too much to be done. Too much more important than them, bigger than them. They’d have to look past their past mistakes, focus on the present, or die.

She hated them both for that, too.

Short Story: Natural Forces

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Culture killed the corps. Lack of it, really.

Culture never fit with the rest of the Corporation as an entity. In retrospect, it was the tell-tale sign of their self-awareness. Culture’s a byproduct of collective, self-aware entities and their existence. Corporate culture though was bland and cold. Real culture was far too vibrant to be mistaken for the non-entity that was Corp culture.

It was night and day.

And in the minds of most people, that’s what it became. The cold, bland, workaday world for wage-slaves and sell-outs. The rest was night. And because of light pollution the corps sold us with bullshit lies, the nights were getting brighter and longer.

It wasn’t ’til Web 2.0 fractured that any change really became apparent though:

Digitally, Humanity had always looked like one, prosperous group formed of a melange of diversity. Fractured though, the two groups didn’t fit. Simply, one was much smaller– far too small to be doing what was being done. That defied visible reality.

Then came the black-market and the bit-currency boon. In the corporate world, the biggest fish ate first. For once though, the corps weren’t it.

Cameron Mobility sold the world its first Augment, but it was people that designed and built it. Specifically, black-marketpeople. In the same way open-source software was designed; in revision-states to rapidly hone designs through the dual forces of need and skill.

It was that same market, firmly ensconced in shadow and belonging to the palaces of thieves, hackers, fixers, their nets of scum and villainy, that finally did the world good.

Yes, the other bazaar. The digital one. Of blacks and whites. Ones and zeros. Where only desire and money existed. And only to serve one another. The same market that once pilfered tea, ran moonshine, hired out hitmen, and sold illicit goods globally.

It was the all-encompassing culture of need/want/payment. One of a new age going nowhere but forward and regardless of its supposed amorality. Nothing would stop it.

The why was simply; the culture really killing the corps was their own. Or rather, the veneer of one they’d formulated from the requirements for complicit employees. Corporate culture had no personability to it. At the end of a long day of number crunching, between work and dinner, no corporate occupier remained to cling to. No external influence for those few times it was needed.

Living without that inspired no security or comfort, and Humans rejected the unfamiliar.

The inherent flaw in the corporations’ system was that their sole concern was only and forever profit. It wasn’t profitable to be clung to; to keep the lights on after 5. To man the sails for the few nights that weren’t calm for the people temporarily below-decks.

After all, profits can’t be maximized with skeleton-crews costing the ship hazard-pay. Those were premium rate-times! Electricity was worth more then. Keeping lights on and people working thinned the margin. No matter how little the consumer needed them. That wasn’t the corporate way. Corporatism was living and dying by the dime, being always and forever in the black.

People didn’t get that guarantee, because they couldn’t give it.There was no corporate-prayer service for when baby’s diaper exploded across the kitchen, and parents need a solvent to clean with. There was no corporate-barricade barring the front door against their own, unwanted intruders. There wasn’t even a corporate-identity. The thing simply existing as part of an individual’s designation. Their actual titles were designed as reflowable to adjust to ever-shifting political-correctness.

But people were all of those things and more.

The mistake was moulding people to an existence between 9AM and 5PM. That world’s totality at your voluntary request, but nonexistent otherwise. And when it did not exist, you did not exist. It was no different than being released from chain-gang to pass time, too tired and battered to do more than daydream, intentionally.

And why wouldn’t people be so battered? Two generations of corporate formation and overt political-correctness had dulled even the sharpest wits. People needed only accept the bargain was good enough for slaves. Since slaves were good and slavery bad, it was good for you, right?

Most people swallowed it without resistance. The chains came later; after compliance but before realization.

The manipulation was obvious. More-so from the outside. Unfortunately few were heard through the din. General insanity had filled the world, post digital-age. Sheer-will oozed enough through to the more enlightened among them. Those few, also broken and damaged, saw no peaceful strategy remaining.

The message for them was clear; run.

The few whom did eventually became the Resistance’s spine and the nerves along its central column. They were more fortunate than most. No more or less intelligent, just aware and better-positioned. They saw enough of the barrel aimed at them to know to duck.

They jumped ship right up ‘til the war, ensuring the survival of the culture they defected to. Their own immortality assured therein. Living as they did ensured they remained important symbols, even if it was all they knew of how, why, what for.

Nowhere was this more obvious than the Aug movement, whose champions themselves formed the very leadership of Corp-Resistance. The results of those champions eventually led to the Fall. They’d begun the right way, simply shifted their focus after circumstances allowed– or rather forced, them to.

That base strategy was straight from the Corp-playbook; re-branding. It had another name too, one far more powerful to a disenfranchised group seeking something more; Evolution. The one the corps had used time and again to validate their actions. The difference was, the scale would allow change in totality, and with utterly no chance or path of reversion.

Of course rallying around Lemaire’s death was convenient; the Paris Incident and its ignition of the Two-Week War forced the few undecided to finally choose sides. The unfortunate side-effect was untold deaths from Corps bombing civilians and rioters alike. Basically, a tantrum of epic portion.

A toll that might’ve been entirely avoided was laid at the feet of every person, man, woman, and child for seeing the injustices and not fighting back. No matter the side of the fence, Lemaire’s death signaled people were no different to Corps than any other expendable resource.

Between rumored brain-hacks, the car-bomb, and the scapegoating of Aug aggression as its cause, it was a wonder the fuse burned so long between times. That it did was a testament to the kind of change people needed, hoped for. It was hesitation that admitted they didn’t want to fuck things up, were damned well working not to, but that peaceful routes were running their course.

And they did.

The fuse burned down, sparking a global implosion that resulted in total collapse of Corporate existence. Culture did that. Or the attempt at one. People were objects; materials, resources. That wasn’t right. Ethics aside, it held no logic.

People weren’t meant to be resources bought, sold, traded, or exploited– they weren’t supposed to be consumed; they were supposed to consume.

But they weren’t consuming and only a few others were. A very select few. So few, in fact, even fewer could overthrow them en-masse no matter their own power. If played right, they needed only tease the promise of what Corps had yet never offered; personalized personability.

The tailoring of anything to one’s desires and without judgment or restriction formed the true foundation of the Resistance. The cultural renaissance that followed saw the futility in things like market-power over-regulation and censorship, because markets regulated power naturally once large enough.

The only barrier to accepting it at the broadest level was feeling outside of it. One could refuse improving a systemic culture more easily if they were part of it themselves. Especially if that culture needed no foundational improvements.

Later, of course, the truth of the illusion was revealed and people had no reason not to accept the new culture, but the totality of the corporate collapse by then, had little to do with the war itself.

It was the people fighting that mattered. Each had their own ideas and visions of a place in this potentially open and globally-connected world. Whether that was through innovations in tech or philosophy, there was no reason people couldn’t negotiate compromise, save competition.

Competition though, no longer needed to exist. In the postdigital age, everyone was equal. The resources were all there; scattered, certainly, but there and only in need of re-distribution. Competition wasn’t necessary anymore, only intelligent planning.

The former was a remnant of the Pre-Human era that survived because of its robustness and ubiquity in a fear-driven world. No longer required, competition could be officially relegated to an exercise in adrenaline, or for conflicts on scales larger than yet-Humanly possible. Those involved in it were glad to have it, while the rest were glad to be rid of it.

Competition could survive as little more than a new-age art-form and thus had no reason not to.

It was simple physics; paths of least resistance. The more a thing clamored to fulfill its role, the more energy it expended and the less effective it was at survival, if only rhetorically.

In short; Evolution was the process of honing biological life to perfection through the mechanism of adaptation. The same went for revision with software, and could go for change with Society.

In other words, constant, minor adjustments and refinements ensured survival. Whether from intent or will, nothing need be handled differently anymore because everything could be quantified, somehow. Quantity itself then became an art; of machined numbers and datum, but an art nonetheless.

Most importantly, if input into the right system, such principles of postdigital progress could do anything, anybody wanted.

In that way, Lemaire’s Resistance wasn’t a resistance at all. It was simply a majority overthrowing a former minority. The newly-dethroned disseminated power gained and lost by the likes of snake-oil salesman, brill-creamed con-men, and dark-spectaled suits. They’d formed pacts to better position their marks to buy and sell them back and forth en-masse, and panicked to death when people finally realized it was happening and ended it.

It took time though– and because of the severity of the grievances, blood.

Yet the foresighted once more led the way to light. It just so happened, that light was also the Resistance, thereby bringing to the fight many whom might have chosen pacifism for sake of family or obligation. That same devotion however, then allowed those lost to become paragons to those that remained.

As if through sheer need of people, the remembered became symbols to rallyboth groups and individuals. It was in this way Lemaire’s death had caused the Paris Incident.

The truly egregious trigger-point for outrage was the volatile mixture of changing culture meeting the bombings that followed.Lemaire was corporate, but human. Used and discarded. She was, like all peoplenow; just a resource, a statistic. One who’d outlived her time in the black, was now in the red from the media-risk inherent in her. Therefore, corporate culture dictated she be zeroed-out as quickly, quietly, and cleanly as possible.

The cheapest, most effective way required exploiting her death at larger scalesto maximize effectiveness. The corporate way dictated a car-bomb to suittheir desires. In one move, they could placetheir currently-manufactured scapegoats– Augs– from the news of the week (Aug aggression) in bed with long-running narratives against conventional fuels and private transport.

That idea secure, they buried reality beneath vague reports, inconsistent datum, late retractions, and less-publicized revisions– for clarifications no less vague but masked as natural fog.

And it backfired. In Totalilty.

People had been at odds with the cultural-divide too long. Nothing remained to cling to of the corporate entity. Money was killing everyone. Any residual effects and influence of corporate veneer too weak to distract from that. Rose-colored glasses could no longer be any less-jaded. More than, that they could now take off the glasses, see the vibrant world beyond.

Ultimately, what killed corps was a simple reality: Corporate culture was a construct. Culture was a natural force.

Guardians of Liberty: Part 3

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

3.

Gather Round the Stone

N1T3 awoke like a hungover noob, head ringing from an ear-piercing ping.

His net-scraping alert system was pinging his rig. Before collapsing like a lump of bled meat, he’d set it to monitor various search terms, and compile them for later review. Then, he’d used it to relay his story, his survival.

All the same, net-silence was witnessed in the time between sending and receiving his ping. The cause was obvious; the Hacker community had gotten the message loud and clear. It was scrambling. They wouldn’t have had time to recover from last night. Not yet. Not fully.

N1T3 figured his escape had fouled up corp-sec’s plans, but enough to save anyone else? He wasn’t sure. His story would’ve put to flight all but the thickest hackers. He just hoped it was enough.

Hope was still thinner than he’d have liked.

But stock had to be taken. Corp-sec couldn’t work in the day as it did in the night. Plus, a sudden repeat of last-night wasn’t possible. Corp-sec couldn’t run such blatant ops so often or even the light-net propaganda couldn’t keep the suspicion off.

And the last thing Corps wanted now was further awareness of what was happening. They’d take a loss before misstepping that greatly.

What was happening, N1T3 knew, was a corporate takeover. A total takeover. In fact, it had been happening for close to a decade. Roughly the same amount of time he’d been out of circulation with the general populous.

He now had only borrowed time, and not much of it. Not unless truly hidden again; an impossibility given he was likely at the top of corp-sec’s hit-list.

The Hackers wouldn’t kid themselves; a first volley had just been fired and a war declared. Would-be leadership was being targeted. N1T3 and others like him, murdered for the sake of the ever-hungry, corporate bottom-line.

Now was time for strategy.

In the game they all knew to be playing, the Corporations had just made their opening gambit. Not clever as they went, but effective. Then again, death– attempted or otherwise– seemed a hell of a lot more than simply effective. It was repugnant.

Especially in a world with no need for violence.

N1T3 and the others knew that to be their world. Even if it wasn’t a practical reality yet. It would get there, given time. Society had evolved infinitely more, better ways of handling problems. Violence was brazen and downright foolish for the damage it did.

In a postdigital world, even a little damage was infinitely more destructive.

It was avoidable, too so long as those individuals involved not already so vested, afraid, or lazy to otherwise prevent it. Well it had been avoidable. Even if no other corp-sec targets survived, rumors would get out– someone would learn the truth.

N1T3 rolled on his cot to stare at the grafitti’d ceiling. Eons of spray paint formed a base-coat beneath words and doodles in varying states of decay. Some were recognizable enough. Slogans were abundant. Written in satire or well-meaning mischief. None mattered.

Bits and pieces of another life attempted to rise in the back of N1T3’s mind. He held them back, falling from the cot onto the floor still fully-dressed. He’d been too wrecked to even remove his armor-thick layers of warmth.

Even if he’d wanted to, the adrenaline and exertion had taken too much from him. He’d collapsed into the sleep of the recently near-dead, then awoke wishing he hadn’t.

The irony was too palpable.

Childhood in the changing world of London had prepared him for irony, but not like this. London’s strive to remain prim, proper, and staunchly conservative despite being hollowed inside-out by crooks, corps, and here-the-under-sign’ds was a joke in comparison.

He fell to his feet, barely noticing their utter ache. He was never meant to be a foot-soldier in a battle. Rather, he was an intelligence officer. Unfortunately, in a battle for intelligence, he was exclusively targeted.

He managed a piss in the old bathroom. The plumbing and electricity still functioned via some overlooked allotment for the city. He’d spliced the power anyhow, so as not to draw attention, but no-one cared about excrement unless it was backing up on them.

In that way, N1T3 had upgraded. In every other way, he’d gone underground.

Trace-back the error.

Back at his workstation, he sifted remote logs from his old server before it went offline. As a general rule, all server logs were exchanged a few times a day. Usually, as little more than a boring, routine list of averages never requiring further investigation.

This time, the logs were off the charts. Alert codes in three and four-letter chains. Power-spikes. Voltage jumps. CPUs and GPUs maxing. Drives failing. All of it in seconds. Obviously, N1T3 was the cause. He’d written the program. Initiated it– just before being chased across a rooftop by sniper fire.

Still, it was nice to know his work wasn’t all for nothing.

He surfed the dead-server’s logs. Nothing. All routine. A few pings here and there, but all systems. No user-pings. All redirects. None explained anything.

He sank in his chair, a stiff, metal, folder he’d have to find a way to replace. Yet another of the victims of the night.

He winced:Chalk-up the tally.

The thought reminded him of Clockwork, An33$A. He realized how insensitive he’d been. Reality forced him forward. The night was over now, or rather, near to beginning again. This was his revelry, that moment of procedure that allowed one to take stock.

The damage. He hated the idea, but all involved needed to know the extent.

Over the course of a series of forum messages and links, he gathered the general feel for the night, what had and might happen:

Corp-sec had run a smash and grab op to crackdown on a series of bleeds in the power-grid. Not uncommon, especially in the inner-city.

Power was at a premium, after all.

It was harder to trace elsewhere where voltage didn’t dip naturally because it wasn’t taxed as often. So, they found it.

A hacker fucked up. It happened. A younger one. One still cutting teeth and shooting metaphorical blanks on a cheap rig. Probably with less know-how than an oyster sucking cock.

All the same, a near-freak occurrence given circumstances. Rather than run somewhere hidden, the kid ran a line in from a rooftop, splicing into an old line connecting one region of the city to another.

What the kid didn’t know was that no section of power-grid couldn’t be shut down entirely without losing sparse levels of surveillance. What, in effect, formed a fortress-cities’ outer ramparts, moat, and sentries. All points where the fortress walls met the outside world, corp-sec often checked.

Because the kid didn’t know shit, he missed that these were digital defenses. Requiring power. Simply shutting out power-hacks from those areas meant shutting out the areas themselves.

What were a few, slow-drip leaks in no-man’s land when the grid was taxed so much worse elsewhere? On the other hand, the taps going over the walls, or nearest them, were considered the most traceable.

It was the difference between tracing wires one at a time, or in giant telecomm clusterfucks.

Few people realized how important that obscurity was. Power was power. One electric, the other ethereal. The few that did, had little choice but to remain outside its cloaking shadow. The few that couldn’t, fought for survival everyday.

So, the rest took notes to better understand how to exploit the weakness or avoid exposure. Unless Humanity fell, they figured, the observations might be valuable to someone somewhere. But nothing was valuable to a kid-Hacker with starry eyes.

The universe is a big place, after all.

N1T3 wanted to curse the kid, that he’d been smart enough to figure out everything and bright enough to know how it all worked, but dumb enough to get it all so wrong. Worst of all, to write it all down– or at least something that had given something away.

N1T3 still wasn’t sure what.

He wanted to curse the kid, but fact was, the coming conflict couldn’t be avoided. It was Human nature, the consequence of self-guided Evolution.

Specializing in number-letter strings and strong hunches meant nothing against automatic weapons. They had their place certainly, but in Human hands. Not postdigital, post-Human hands.

Even the notes ending up in corp-sec hands through happenstance was fine, provided they did something benign or unexpected with it. Yet they knew its value as anomaly, aberration.

And seized it.

That was dangerous. Corp-sec had seen the power of Hackers, their value. Despite obscurity. Then, somehow traced them physically.

Anomalous enough, but N1T3 doubted even allowing for schemes, corp-sec couldn’t afford more exposure right now. Which meant he wouldn’t know how it had been done. Not yet.

And he might make the same mistakes they’d all, already made.

He needed time. However much he had would be less than he needed. Sure, if Gen-pop got wind of corp-sec moves too fast, media-spin couldn’t take effect properly.

But flip-side, N1T3 and the other Hackers couldn’t force the Corps’ hand either. And neither side could move without assured, widespread adherence to their orders.

Things not going the right way couldn’t be going any way. There was no room for gray here. There was only yes or no. On-off. 0 or 1. Anyone trying to find middle-ground would be swept into one or the other unwillingly. It was best to let things simmer as they were– if only long enough for the dust to settle.

He finished his recollection and research, then addressed his alert with his full attention; a growing archive of everything regarding the building he’d left behind, its surroundings, An33$a, Clockwork, other hackers he knew of.

In it were the countless attempts at exclusive snippets from various light-net media agencies. All of them fronts or affiliates of the big-4. Each sang the same tune; fire in an abandoned, London building becomes arson, becomes terrorism, becomes heroic peace-keeping gone awry.

And there, nestled beneath the updates, misinformation, and outright lies was Martin Black. At-large. Presumed dangerous. Wanted in connection with domestic terrorist activities.

N1T3 smiled; domestic terrorist, for coding. Typing. Calling bullshit. The corp-media was already pinning him as another violent revolutionary.

How they’d found him was one thing. Finding out who he was really, was another entirely.

Mostly, because the information was utterly useless. Martin Black had long ago ceased to be; had long ago become N1T3.

The latter’s infamy was built off legends his fellow code-jocks told of him. Originating in the old vets that knew him as the up-and-comer he’d once been, and the encyclopedia of history, tech, and code he became, he’d surpassed any and every expectation and challenge.

To Hackers that knew him, he represented something more, as a symbol of their innate ability to redeem. To revise. To learn and grow.

Yet, the reports shook N1T3 deeper than he liked. Martin Black was his name, his childhood, his life. A part of him forgotten in the consequence of time. Something phantom yet cross-fading eternally with the present.

At least, until the war was over. Now, it had only just begun. Who knew if he’d live to see its end? What mattered was ensuring the proper stratagem remained even if he– or no-one else for that matter, remained with it. In essence, ensuring the Hackable nature of society was always known.

If there was anything N1T3 was capable of, it was that.